


Nightmares and the Discussions that Follow

by ThatArtsyHoe



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Parental Hakoda (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, Zuko's Scar (Avatar), dadkoda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:29:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26955874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatArtsyHoe/pseuds/ThatArtsyHoe
Summary: Panuk is the first to figure out that the Prince of the Fire Nation might not be okay. Lots of talking and planning ensues.This takes place after chapter 6 and right before chapter 7 of MuffinLance's Salvage,
Relationships: Bato & Zuko (Avatar), Hakoda & Zuko (Avatar), Water Tribe & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar)/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 266





	Nightmares and the Discussions that Follow

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Salvage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116591) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> Hi! Soooo this is the thing I've been working on :) I have a pretty clear picture of what it's gonna look like when I'm done and honestly like it so far. On an unrelated note you know I've gone batshit crazy when I start writing a fanfiction based on a fanfiction. So yeah hope you enjoy!

Panuk noticed more than he let on.

Everybody assumed that just because he was a no-nonsense person, he was also not very capable of reading social cues and signs. They were wrong. Over the course of the time that the Fire Prince had been prisoner to them, he had noticed some very… peculiar things happening with the teenager. He decidedly did not like the picture that was being painted.

The Fire Prince had nightmares. Almost everybody of the crew knew that now. Almost every night, if you stayed up late enough, or woke up in the dead of night, you would hear the heavy thrashing of the Prince, and the faint whimpers and grimaces that followed. Panuk might not have been the brightest, but he was nothing at all, if not observant. He could tell that as the days trudged on, the nightmares got worse, and the whimpers got louder. Something had happened to the Fire Prince. He just had to figure out what.

Panuk found himself opening his eyes and looking up at the wooden ceiling above him. He had woken up in the middle of the night. Again. A rough voice turned his attention away from his thoughts, and onto the teenager that lay in the hammock next to him.

“Please, no.” He was sleeping on his scarred side, and judging by the harsh scrunch of his face and sleeptalking, he was having yet another nightmare.

Panuk heard some of the others stir at the sound of the Prince’s voice, and glanced over at Toklo through the dark, the only one he could see clearly in the moonlit room. Toklo looked back at him, clearly awake.

“No, please! No,” Panuk could hear yet another person wake at the sudden words from the firebender. The Prince now started to whimper. Quietly, yet surely. He suddenly reached out to his scar.

“Please, no,” He could sense his body stiffening. “Father.”

Panuk heard a gasp from across the room. Then the boy went dead silent. The thrashing stopped, his mouth was shut, and oddly enough, his face went blank. It was like a dead body. Panuk started to wonder what kind of a nightmare could have the Fire Prince in such a state. It was terrifying.

After a few minutes of the silence, Panuk decided that he might as well try to get some sleep. He rolled over, so he was facing away from the Prince, and towards the wall. As troubled as he was, after a few minutes of rocking, the sea managed to lull Panuk back to sleep.

The rest of the week, Panuk didn’t speak of the incident. The prince -no, the boy- didn’t seem to know that Panuk and some others had overheard the particularly bad nightmare, and he wasn’t planning on letting him know any time soon. Panuk enjoyed being not on fire, thank you very much. Also, he almost felt as if he was intruding. He felt as if he was walking in on something so personal to Zuko, something he wished to keep to himself. So Panuk kept it that way. For the rest of the week, he talked to his friends, steered clear of the Fire Nation Prince, and did his chores. On the 8th day after the incident, Panuk pulled his blanket over his shoulders just like everyone else, and went to sleep.

Then suddenly, he was awake. Panuk heard Zuko let out a blood-curdling scream as he shot upright in his hammock. His breathing was still heavy, and even in the dark, he could notice the beads of sweat hanging off the teen’s forehead. After waking up from what seemed to have been a nightmare, his scream had woken up the entire crew. The rest of them were just lying there, hoping their fake slumber would go unnoticed by the young fire prince. Too bad they were such painfully bad liars.

Panuk for one, was already sitting upright as well, and when he heard the teen leave his hammock, he spoke up.

“Do you want any tea?” The Prince just looked at him, his expression unreadable.

There was a pause before he got a response. “Yes.”

Panuk got down from his hammock, and left the room, locking eyes with Toklo briefly, who was now sitting up in his hammock too. Zuko sat down on the wooden floor, leaning against the wall.

“That must have been some nightmare.” Toklo was looking at Zuko now, a concerned look on his face. Zuko refused to meet his gaze and just kept looking straight ahead of him. A practiced “I’m fine”, was all he could manage in return.

The door squeaked back open, and then Panuk was back in the room, two steaming cups of tea in hand. He set them on the floor, and then sat there beside Zuko. Panuk could feel the thickness of the air and saw the way Toklo was looking at Zuko-the look usually reserved for when one of the crew members was hurt- and decided to try to change it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m fine.” That made Panuk and Toklo frown a bit and share a glance with something in it that Zuko couldn’t exactly understand. Pity? Scorn? Concern?

“That wasn’t the question,” Said Panuk, now with a definitely worried look etched onto his face.

“I said I’m fine,” He snapped back. Zuko had just about shut down now. It was as if the more Panuk tried to help, the more Zuko pushed back, until eventually he would be completely closed off again.

“You don’t seem like it.” There was no response from the teenager. “Come.” Panuk opened the cabin door, then motioned for Zuko to follow. Maybe it was the fact that that command was most likely an order from his ‘guard’, or maybe it was the fact that Zuko would probably do anything to get out of that stuffy crew cabin, but he quickly followed Panuk up unto the deck, and towards the edge of it. He then promptly plopped down by a pole, leaned against it, and started sipping his tea. This, unfortunately, left Zuko dumbfounded as to what in the world to do at that moment. Tui and La, why couldn’t human interaction be any easier? After contemplating what to do, he soon followed Panuk’s demonstration and sat down on the wooden pole next to him. He nimbly took what he assumed was his cup of tea and sipped it. It wasn’t as good as Uncle’s, but almost nothing could compare to that. That was good. Something too similar to Uncle’s would have made him too homesick, and he really didn’t need that right now. When Zuko finally glanced up from his cup of tea, he saw Panuk looking at him expectantly. Those bright blue eyes bore into him like a question that Zuko had yet to answer. He looked back down at his tea to avoid Panuk’s gaze.

“Talking about it can help.”

“What?” Zuko finally looked up again.

“About the nightmares, I mean. They seem to be pretty bad.” That earned a scowl from the teen and prompted him to turn away to face the water.

“Why do you care?”

“Well you are keeping up half the crew with these nightmares of yours,” said Panuk with a laugh. This did not reciprocate well with Zuko.

“Oh. Sorry.” Zuko’s brow furrowed as he still continued to avoid Panku’s gaze. What was that look on his face? Guilt? Surely the prince of the Fire Nation couldn’t be guilty because of that, right?

“Wait, no. That’s not what I meant.” They locked eyes again. “What I mean is that uh, I’ve heard your nightmares before, and I uh, think I can help?” This was obviously not going the way Panuk meant for it to go.

“You don’t have to help me. There’s nothing to help.” There was a bit of venom when Zuko said this. “Besides, I’m far too old to be having nightmares. It’s stupid.” He looked back out at the ocean, the glimmering moon shining onto the lapping waves.

“Do you really think that?” There was again no response from the teen. “Nightmares aren’t stupid, and they certainly don’t make you weak.”

“I never said they did.”

“But you’re thinking it.” A cool silence washed over them again.

“So what if I am? Just saying that doesn’t change it.”

“But what I said is true. Nightmares don’t make you weak. If anything it’s a sign of strength.” At that, the Prince finally looked up from his glare at the water with expecting eyes. “It shows that you’ve endured something unbearable. And that you’re a survivor.”

Zuko looked back out towards the ocean, his brow scrunched, but his eyes gleaming. Panuk could tell that his work here was done.

“Come on, let’s go back down. You’re probably cold.” Zuko got up with his now empty cup and nodded. “Feel better?” The teen paused, then looked up to meet Punk's eyes. With that, he gave a nod different from the last. Panuk could tell that simple gesture wasn’t just an automatic reply. He smiled softly as they entered the crew cabin again.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

************************************************

“So I take it you took Zuko above deck last night?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.”

“And you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

“Chief-”

“You were on deck. In the dead of night. With just the fire Prince. Really? Now, I trust that you had intentions and this wasn’t just some outburst of you pitying the kid, so I want you to answer to just me. Not the Chief. Just Hakoda.”

“Okay.” Panuk took in a deep breath. “Well, the kid had a nightmare.” Hakoda just raised an eyebrow. “A bad one. It was- it was horrible. I swear, I could hear him crying in his sleep. He woke up with a scream so terrifying it woke almost everybody in the crew cabin up. Anyways, he was pretty loud.” Panuk wondered if he should tell the rest of the story. The probably private details of the story. But this was the chief, after all. He couldn’t lie even if he tried. “It sounded like… it sounded like he was begging in his sleep. And by the sound of it, for his life. And that’s not even the worst part of it.” Hakoda just stood there, a concerned but perplexed look creeping onto his face. “He was begging his father.”

“But-”

“When he woke up, he was so shaken up by it that he seemed like he was going to go into a panic attack. So, I offered to talk to him, in hopes of not having our ship turned ablaze by a panicked firebender.” Hakoda listened, every muscle in his body telling him that what happened last night couldn’t have been a new occurrence. Hakoda couldn’t figure out what disgusted him more: Zuko begging his father not to hurt him, or the fact that a nightmare about it was a regular occurrence. “Anyways, he wouldn’t talk with everybody present and probably awake, so then I offered to talk to him for a few minutes on deck. So yeah, that’s basically it.” Panuk rubbed the back of his neck a bit awkwardly as he finished the story.

“So-”

“But you have to understand, it was the least I could do, Hakoda. It won’t happen again if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“No, no, I understand. I can’t imagine what kind of a dream could have the Fire Prince in shambles. You did the right thing. We need a boat that’s not completely engulfed in flames, don’t we?” And at that, they smiled and shared a brief hug before going their separate ways for the day. What an interesting week it had been.

Yeah, Panuk definitely noticed a lot more than he let on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
